Darwin memorial lecture coming to Shrewsbury

The lecture, called "I, The Geologist": Charles Darwin's First career, will be given at Theatre Severn by Professor Martin Rudwick.

Charles Darwin first became known in the scientific world as a promising young geologist. This gave him the intellectual framework for much of his biological work.

In this illustrated lecture Professor Rudwick describes what Darwin did in his first career, from his earliest geological training while based in Shrewsbury, through his fieldwork in South America and the coral islands of the Pacific, to his final fieldwork on the Parallel Roads in Scotland, which coincided with the creative biological thinking that later culminated in On the Origin of Species.

Professor Rudwick's own first career was as an evolutionary palaeontologist at Cambridge.

Later he switched to the history of this and related sciences, which he taught successively at Cambridge, Amsterdam, Princeton and California. He has an international reputation and has published several books, most recently – and for the general reader – Earth's Deep History.

The lecture will be on February 11 from 2.30pm to 3.30pm.

Tickets cost £12.